Bethesda should really do something about the player's immortality to inject some sense of danger. Being able to quick save every couple of seconds and then just carry on after death with no consequences dampens the alarm at being suddenly confronted by a potentially lethal situation. Player's have to manufacture their own 'dead is dead' rules to add urgency.

Mount & Blade handles this well. The player never 'dies', you're just knocked unconscious, captured, dragged around the map for a few days, before 'escaping' at a random location with some of your gear and money missing. It means you put extra effort into stopping your health bar hitting zero, because 'death' has consequences. Companions are also immortal, but if they go down they can be out of action for a few days while they heal up. A system similar to that could really heighten the tension.

He makes them money...

Oh I don't know maybe because with him at the helm they have gone from a smaller sized studio to an industry leader. You know business rarely reward success with firing your Ar$e. But hey why let logic trump your rant. Break out the torches and pitchforks! Down with TH!!

Why should he? Bethesda has zero insentive to seek out people from a failed studio that closed over 10 years ago (Dec 8 2003). Fo3 was a success it was well recieved (won multiple awards) and sold lots of copies. Why on earth would bethesda feel the need? You don't look to the past when you just launched a successful game. If FO3 was a failure then yeah they would be an insentive to talk to the Black Isle developers but it wasn't. That may not be what you wanted but FO3 was a success so no reason to ask advise from Black Isle studios.

As much as i loved the games that they made they failed as a studio and Bethesda succeeded with their own take on the fallout IP. They own it now and anything they do with it is 100% fitting to the lore because it is THEIR IP now.

Pack mules and merchant NPC's being immortal is also very bad.

You heard it here folks!

Less save scumming for me.

I don't see the issue, it's not like you won't be able to unset their immortality in the GECK.

Frankly, I couldn't care less that they're essential. The RP I do in game is already limited and doesn't extend beyond a backstory for my character, and consequences for a companion dying aren't exactly my cup of tea. With that said, I wish it was toggleable - options are good for everyone.

The issue, at least for some of us PC gamers is that we don't want to go in the GECK to make essential NPC's killable or have to download mods that make essential NPC's killable. When we can be spending that time creating new armors, weapons and quests or downloading those mods instead.

Yeah but any NPCs Bethesda makes essential will have zero consequence or story progression as a result of their death.

well it just a way for people to rant that FO4 isn't a FO1 and 2 clone.

Skyrim companions was protected, you could kill them enemies could not, it had one bug in that then they was knocked down to 1 health they would die from traps even if triggered by enemies.

The protected system works well outside of this bug and solves many of the essential problems.

If the players go around killing everything its their problem if they are locked out of quests.

These are bad news indeed. And its funny how Todd Howard speaks for everybody that "if you lost a companion you reload" i for once didnt reload when i lost companions in FO3 actually when i lost companions it made me go out and search for new ones and it would do much more so than it would when i have one invincible follower around me.

Good, that means I don't have to babysit my companions AND keep my character alive during a tense firefight. If they go down, well they can just take a short nap while I take care of the mess.

But I can see why many would be frustrated at this apparent 'hand-holding'. Hopefully there's a toggle option so they can die, but I wouldn't count on it.

Im pretty dissaponted by this news, when playing Fo3:BS i was with paladin cross and dogmeat while assualting the enclave base with liberty prime, but all three of us had no idea about the orbital strike, i got ragdolled in the explosion then standing up realising Cross had been vaporised and dogmeat lay dead at the head of LB. moments like that are now gone!

yes, however melee characters who is close to the enemy tend to end up hit a lot, if nothing else as many of the enemies was unable to hit me.

Good point. Essential companions robs you of the emotional distraught you get when you find out they died during a chaotic fight. Now it'll just be, "Eh, they'll live being hit by orbital strike."

Because it is a widely known fact that he has no clue of what makes Fallout.

It won't break his success of make him lose money to try to be faithfull to the series he intend making sequels.

Otherwise, he might make a new IP and assume totally his mindset.

Ideally I would like to see the option to either revive a downed companion by using a [censored]load of stimpacks on them, or let them die.

But I hardly use companions anyway, they only seem to get in my way. So, don't really care.

That is just ridiculous. What if I want to kill them because the character I rolled is a bit psychotic?

There is a choice taken away.

Imagine a Slyrim where Lydia couldn't die. Or worse, imagine an Oblivion where The Adoring Fan can't die.

I see no reason why a beloved follower shouldn′t be immortal. That frees me up from saving even more frequently so I can reload if they die. Still, an option to toggle it is the best way I think. That way if you want a follower but don′t really care too much if they die or stick with you forever, you can choose to have them mortal

Which would take less than a day to code...

I never reloaded after a companion death. If my dog died, so be it. If the slave girl Clover that I bought to from Eulogy Jones died, I looted her body for the gear I gave her and moved on. This is possibly the first negative thing I have had to say about FO4. I wonder though, if they go into a limp mode like Skyrim, if I can then kill them myself.

I usually play the games on normal difficulty, but I hope even in that mode that this is something I can toggle on or off.

More dumbing down. I'm fed up of it. It shouldn't be left to modders to make the game that many of us want to play. It really irritates me when they say they care about their fans, yet completely ignore a rather large portion of them.

I should seriously stop reading anything fallout 4, its just bumming me out now.

I agree with you, in fact, I could care less whether companions are immortal or not. I don't use them, never have, it's the "design philosophy" behind the decision I take issue with.

Game companies have a finite amount of resources (time, money) for each project, so they have to make choices where their emphasis will lie. Beth seems to have put a lot of time/emphasis on crafting, and while it looks interesting, that means something else didn't get as much attention. If that something is, for instance, multiple paths/choices in doing quests, then I don't find that desirable.

Someone once said that skyrim was "a mile wide, but an inch deep", and I agree with that assessment. They sacrificed "depth" for "eye candy", and the problem is.....it worked (at least for sales numbers) I'm sure that their massive advertising helped a lot too. So their "design philosophy" became, less depth, more eye candy + advertising = more sales.

I'm afraid that they imported that philosophy to FO, and that immortal companions is just the first sign of this "disease"